review Prodigies in Rome- Engels Das römische Vorzeichenwesen

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Prodigies in Rome (D.) Engels Das rmische Vorzeichenwesen (75327 v.Chr.). Quellen, Terminologie, Kommentar, historische Entwicklung.(Potsdamer Altertumswissenschaftliche Beitrge 22.) Pp. 877. Stuttgart:Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007. Cased, 98. ISBN: 978-3-515-09027-8.

William E. Klingshirn

The Classical Review / Volume 59 / Issue 01 / April 2009, pp 215 - 218DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X08002576, Published online: 11 March 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X08002576

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William E. Klingshirn (2009). The Classical Review, 59, pp 215-218 doi:10.1017/S0009840X08002576

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Classics in Anglo-Saxon universities at least partially reects such a reading of the

ancient literary evidence, which accords the Etruscans the role of a semi-barbaric

fringe culture.

L. considers the literary treatment oftruphto fall into three distinct groups. Therst of these has come down to us in the fragmentary record of Theopompus who,

according to L., follows an ethnographic tradition in the vein of Herodotus Histories.This approach, L. suggests (in so far as the scarcity of the available sources allows this

conclusion), was much more neutral and free of prejudice than is commonly assumed.

The second group is represented by the writings of Posidonius and Dionysius of

Halicarnassus. Here, L. identies a continuing interest in ethnography but also

suggests an increasing desire to link the Roman and Italian with the Greek worlds. In

this regard, the Etruscans are seen to reect certain characteristics which a writer like

Posidonius might have associated with earlier Greeks but considered inappropriate

for the present day, and thus indicative of decline. In a similar way Roman authors,

L.s third group, had a primarily self-reective and historical interest in and largely

critical attitude to Etruscantruph. This, as L. suggests, is particularly true of laterwriters such as Livy; by contrast, the signicance whether genuinely derogatory or

merely supercially comical and origin of references to forms oftruphin Plautus(Cist.5623;Curc.4825) might be less clear.

So much for literary representations of truph, but what about its realities inEtruscan life? With regard to these, familiar representations of certain topoi inEtruscan art (sexual licence, ute playing, obesity) lead L. to conclude that the literary

tradition(s) must ultimately have been based on real-life observations, however

distorted. This is not in itself unlikely. However, one might have wished for a more

sensitive treatment of the archaeological evidence. This primarily comes from

funerary contexts and might, therefore, have warranted a more in-depth discussionof how, say, a Tarquinian tomb painting of the sixth century B.C. may or may not

have represented a reality of life (and where). The quality of the illustrations is,

furthermore, disappointing, although this may hardly be the authors fault.

L.s study of Etruscantruphis a welcome addition to the historiographic study ofa culture that deserves a more prominent place within Classics than it currently holds.

The relevant passages are reproduced in full and translated into French, including ve

appendices. The indexes have been meticulously compiled and the bibliography is

up-to-date. The price, too, is user-friendly.

University of Cape Town ROMAN [email protected]

PRODIGIES IN ROME

E (D.) Das rmische Vorzeichenwesen (75327 v. Chr.).Quellen, Terminologie, Kommentar, historische Entwicklung. (PotsdamerAltertumswissenschaftliche Beitrge 22.) Pp. 877. Stuttgart: Franz

Steiner Verlag, 2007. Cased, 98. ISBN: 978-3-515-09027-8.doi:10.1017/S0009840X08002576

Over the past decade, the prodigy system of the Roman republic has been the subject

of renewed interest among ancient historians. In Gezhmte Gtter. Das Prodigien-wesen der rmischen Republik(Stuttgart, 1998), Veit Rosenberger closely investigatedthe inner workings of the system, paying particular attention to the mentalities and

The Classical Review vol. 59 no. 1 The Classical Association 2009; all rights reserved

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procedures that supplied it with religious meaning, the nature of the signs that

marked its eld of action, the social signicance of its rituals of expiation, and its

close correlation with the rise and fall of the Republic. A broader, avowedly

sociological approach was taken by Susanne William Rasmussen inPublic Portents inRepublican Rome (Rome, 2003). In an eort to determine the role that publicdivination played in the construction of Roman identity, she examined prodigies andtheir expiation alongside the signs found in sacriced animals and observed in the

auspices. Now we have David Engels study, a comprehensive handbook of prodigies

and the texts that describe and interpret them. Based on a dissertation completed at

Aachen in 2005, this volume is devoted to pre-republican and republican prodigies; in

a future volume, E. plans to focus on prodigies of the imperial period (p. 18).

At the heart of the book is a list of 401 prodigies and groups of prodigies, each

with accompanying commentary and full references to sources and literature

(pp. 283723). Prodigies (except for those that cannot be precisely dated) are chrono-

logically arranged in six historical periods; they are labelled RVW 1, RVW 2, etc., in

what promises to become a standard numbering system. Some headings include asingle prodigy (e.g. RVW 159, the ooding of the Tiber in 189); others contain several

that belong together (e.g. RVW 136, prodigies of the year 203 as observed in Rome,

Antium, Capua, Reate, Anagnia, Frusino and Arpinum). In ten cases, headings are

subdivided to account for particularly signicant multiple prodigies, for example

those pertaining to Caesars death (RVW 342.114). Commentary usually goes on for

a paragraph or two, but it can sometimes consist simply of a brief summary of the

prodigy (e.g. RVW 95, one sentence on Pliny,HN7.35) and at other times it takes theform of an essay of ve or six pages (e.g. RVW 86, on the prodigies of the year 249

that led to the establishment of theludi saeculares).

The prodigy list, located in Chapter 4, is preceded by three introductory chapters.Chapter 1 (pp. 1159) explains the books purpose, briey surveys the literature (to be

exhaustively reviewed in later chapters), and spells out ve criteria for dening signs

as prodigies. The rst is that the sign must be oriented toward the future. This takes

into account the possibility of future harm if the sign is ignored and the need to take

care in advance by means of aprocuratio. Second, it is necessary that the bearer ofthe sign be unaware of its signicance. Third, the sign must be such that its character

as a message from the gods cannot be ignored. Disasters with obviously natural or

human causes cannot normally be interpreted as prodigies. Nor should one

necessarily categorise as a prodigy every event that leads to religious action. Thus,

unlike Rasmussen (PT 1 inPublic Portents, p. 53), E. does not classify the crop failurementioned at Dion. Hal.Ant.Rom. 6.17.23 as a prodigy, even though it led to theconsultation of the Sibylline books and the vowing of a temple (p. 55). The fourth

criterion he proposes is the explicit labelling of an event as a prodigy, although this

information is often lacking and even when present must be checked against the other

criteria. Finally, E. requires that prodigies not be deliberately sought by human eort;

they are thus oblative rather than impetrative (Servius,Aen. 6.190).Chapter 2 discusses the written sources for our knowledge of prodigies, including

the records of thepontices(pp. 6086), archives of the senate, magistrates and priests(pp. 8792), non-ction authors from Q. Fabius Pictor to Verrius Flaccus

(pp. 93244) and poets (pp. 24458). E.s procedure here is to cross-reference to his listthe prodigies each author relates, discuss the authors terminology and sources, and

evaluate his attitude toward prodigies.

Chapter 3 discusses the etymology and meaning of each of the main Latin words

for prodigy:prodigium,ostentum,portentum,monstrumand omen(pp. 25982). It is

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relatively brief because all these words were discussed in detail in the previous

chapter. This chapter does make clear that while a majority of authors considered

prodigiumthe general term (p. 260), others usedostentumin the same sense (p. 270). Itfurther concludes that no xed meaning can be attached to any of the Latin or Greek

words used to denote prodigies: their usage varies by author.

The rst four chapters constitute a vast compendium of information: logically

organised (though sometimes repetitive), painstakingly detailed and judiciously

appraised. It is not until Chapter 5 that a sustained historical narrative is attempted

(pp. 72497), but here what one mainly nds is a cautious and somewhat conventional

synthesis based on the evaluation of previous opinion. The rst section, covering the

period from Aeneas to the founding of the Republic (RVW 128), attempts to identify

the Latin roots of the prodigy system as well as the Etruscan and Greek inuences

that shaped it. This paves the way, in the period from 509 to 390 (RVW 2961), for the

prodigy system to be linked to the strength of national Latin elements. It was during

this period, E. believes (p. 747), following Claudia Santi (La nozione di prodigio in

et regia, SMSR20 (1996), 50524), that the term prodigiumincreasingly lost itsneutral sense and began to indicate divine anger. The next period, from the fourth

century to the beginning of the Second Punic War (RVW 6294), saw the

establishment of all the features that characterised the fully developed system of

public prodigies in the second century. At the same time, Greek philosophical ideas

began to inuence the divinatory beliefs (though not the practices) of educated

Romans. The Second Punic War, which gave rise to a large number of prodigies (RVW

95139), is seen as a turning point: it represents the height of the prodigy system but

also the beginning of its decline (p. 763, quoting Ludwig Wlkers 1903 dissertation).

In the next phase, from 201 to 133 (RVW 140220), prodigies were observed over anincreasingly extensive Roman territory, but at the same time their instrumental-

ization by the senate and magistrates increased. Finally, in the period between 133

and 27 (RVW 221380), the republican prodigy system collapsed as a result of the

manipulation of prodigies, philosophical scepticism about religion, and the growing

popularity of personal forms of divination better suited to political domination and

less amenable to aristocratic control.

In Chapter 6 (pp. 798825), E. asks why the Romans should have developed their

prodigy system in the rst place. To many, this will seem like an impossible question,

but E. locates the answer in the realm of ethnopsychology. The earliest Romans, he

says, lived in an organic society that was rigidly patriarchal, with leaders who werecalledpatresand gods that were likebervter. Massive neuroses resulted when theRomans childlike nature confronted divine (parental) disapproval. This drove their

elites to create a system that limited the power of the gods at the same time as it

obtained their permission. E. nds the mechanism for this in Sigmund Freuds

well-known paper on obsessive actions and religious practice (Zwangshandlungen

und Religionsbung,Zeitschrift fr Religionspsychologie 1 [1908], 412); he thenlinks it to divination by way of G. Devereux, Considrations psychanalytiques sur la

divination, particulirement chez les Grecs, inLa Divination, ed. A. Caquot and M.Leibovici, 2 (Paris, 1968), pp. 44971. The result is interesting, but highly speculative,

and based on assumptions about the nature of early Roman society and the validityof psychohistory that some, perhaps many, readers will not share. Chapter 6 is so

dierent from preceding chapters, however, that one does not need to accept its

approach to form a favourable judgement about the whole. Indeed, it is in the

collection, analysis and historiography of Roman republican prodigies that this book

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makes its main contribution, rather than in its description of the social and political

framework in which these made religious sense.

The Bibliography (pp. 82659) lists only the most important secondary literature

cited in the book. Books and articles cited less frequently are not listed there; they are

instead given full bibliographical details in the notes in which they appear. The Index

with which the book ends (pp. 86077) is also limited: it is an index of the primarysources cited in the prodigy list in Chapter 4. There is no index of subjects or names,

but it is not easy to imagine how these could have been managed. The handbook

format and detailed table of contents make it possible to nd what the reader needs

without too much diculty.

The Catholic University of America WILLIAM E. [email protected]

ROMAN CULTURE IN EGYPT

H (F.) Prinzeps und Pharao. Der Kult des Augustus ingypten. (Oikumene. Studien zur antiken Weltgeschichte 4.) Pp. 507,map. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Antike, 2007. Cased, 69.90. ISBN:

978-3-938032-15-2.doi:10.1017/S0009840X08002588

This monumental study of the cult of Augustus in Egypt lls a gap in several respects.

On the one hand, Egyptologists still concentrate their studies on the classical periods

of Egyptian culture, the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms. Classical archaeologists

dealing with the Roman period, on the other hand, consider Egypt as exceptional

because of its dominant three-thousand-year-old culture that was still vivid when

Octavian conquered Egypt in 30 B.C. Historians, nally, have studied intensively the

period of the Ptolemies,1 while the history of the Roman period has been only

summarized.2 As a result, research on Roman culture in Egypt is still in its infancy.

Unlike in other provinces of the Roman empire, the conquerors of Egypt met a

strong culture which already dominated other peoples. H. aims to reect the cult of

Augustus in all its aspects. She has meticulously collected all the existing sources for

the period; but unfortunately this enormous eort lacks analysis and new ideas ortheories for further discussion.

As an archaeologist I note several methodological problems. H. acknowledges an

architectural tradition for the building programme of temples from the late Ptolemaic

period onwards. On p. 207, however, she states: Leider sind keine in augusteischer

Zeit errichteten oder dekorierten Tempel aus dem Nildelta erhalten geblieben, so dass

hier keine Aussage getroen werden kann. I myself doubt that there have been any,

because even the late Ptolemies did not build temples in this region.

The Classical Review vol. 59 no. 1 The Classical Association 2009; all rights reserved

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1G. Hlbl, Geschichte des Ptolemerreiches(Darmstadt, 1994); S. Pfeier, Herrscher- undDynastiekulte im Ptolemerreich(Munich, 2008).

2G. Hlbl,Altgypten im rmischen Reich. Der rmische Pharao und seine Tempel1 (Mainz,2000), 946.

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